Down for the Count

For no particular reason, I was thinking about congas the other day.

A "conga" in collector-speak is a line up of model horses manufactured out of a single mold in a variety of colours and finishes.  Since most model horses are displayed shoulder to shoulder rather than nose to tail, the resulting formation of horses is really more like a chorus line than a conga line, but "conga" is a handy term, and has come to be used as both a collective noun (a conga of horses) and as a verb (to conga a particular mold of horse).

To have a complete conga of any one mold is a nearly impossible dream.  Even once the mold in question is destroyed, as Alborozo most famously was, it may continue to show up as a limited special runs or one-of-a-kind models -- in fact, the rarer the model the more difficult the mold itself becomes to conga.  If a mold that you conga turns up as a Breyer collectors' event model or, worse still, as a Breyerfest auction model, you can practically wave good-bye to your complete conga dreams.  And no one really knows how many different molds have been used to make test colour models; we only find out about them when they turn up on the marketplace.

The only sensible thing to do in such a situation is to limit your conga in some way.  I've done this myself with the one mold I intentionally conga:  the Breyer Traditional Shetland Pony.  I currently consider my conga to be complete, but I can only do so by ignoring certain things.  Firstly, I don't count any test colours or Breyerfest auction items as part of my "complete" conga.  I also discount the ultra-rare grey appaloosa Shetland.  If I did find one of them "in the wild" I would happily add it to my collection, but the handful of times I've seen one come on the market they've been going for thousands (yes, thousands) more than I'd ever be willing to pay for a piece of injection-molded plastic.

Cute Attack!  My Shetland Pony army on the march.

I also have no particular desire to collect different finishes of the same colour -- matte or gloss makes no difference to me -- nor am I looking to collect small variations, such as the solid-faced bay vs. the blaze faced bay on the no. 23 bay Shetland pony.  Again, as with the appaloosa, should I run across a solid face somewhere by accident, or happen upon a really different shade of the no. 22 palomino pinto, I'd probably add one to my conga, but for now having one ordinary blaze-faced no. 23 and one pale palomino pinto no. 22 is enough for me.

Shetlands standing shoulder to shoulder

Anyway, what got me thinking of congas was not really my own conga, but an idle question that wandered through my head: What, I wondered, is the easiest Breyer horse to conga?

It didn't take me long to come up with an answer.  Discounting oddballs like the hairy Thelwell pony "Kipper," and leaving aside unfinished craft kit horses and horses made in any media other than plastic, the simplest Breyer horse to conga has to be the Classic Reflections (sometimes called "Aged") Mesteño mold.  The poor old guy has only had one release -- the original no. 481 from 1996.  I used to have a complete conga of this mold, but I sold him some time ago.

Of course, if you ask what is the easiest Breyer equine to conga, then the Companion Animal miniature donkey is also a contender, having so far been released only once, as the no. 1522 Miniature Sicilian Donkey.  Expanding the question to include all Breyer critters brings in a number of dogs, birds, and other animals -- making in impossible to provide any kind of meaningful answer.

What, then, is the most difficult Breyer horse to conga?  Well, there's no way I could answer this without recourse to both Penny Lehew's and Felicia Browell's Breyer Animal Quick Reference book and Janice Cox's Identify Your Breyer database, but having nothing more urgent to do one day, I decided to try and make a count.

The answer I've come up with is the Fighting Stallion with at least 97 distinct variations (including this year's Breyerfest auction horse), many of them one-offs or incredibly rare.  My count might be off a bit, and may not tally with yours as I haven't counted the glossy alabaster with little shading and the glossy alabaster with extensive shading as different horses, while I have counted the woodgrain and the woodgrain lamp as being two different beasts.

It's also possible that I somehow missed a horse with more variations (after an afternoon of counting, one's eyes tend to glaze over), but in any case I think we can all agree that amassing a complete conga of Fighting Stallions would be a phenomenal feat.

Also, I think I'd be a little frightened of the person determined enough to do it.